Muffin But Murder (A Merry Muffin Mystery) (20 page)

“If that’s true, Channer had an even stronger motive than just splitting them up,” I mused. “I know I said he was just the kind of guy to kill someone who got in his way, and I wouldn’t want to cross the man, but still . . . would he kill Davey Hooper to prevent photos or video of his daughter coming out? Wouldn’t he be motivated to keep him alive at least until he got the photos or video?”

“The killing may not have been a planned ending. He could have met Hooper to pay him off and ended up arguing with him.”

“True. Okay, let’s get back. I’m anxious to hear if she saw anything that night. I just don’t know whether to call Virgil or not.” Agitated, I stepped back and forth from foot to foot. “What do you think I should do, Pish?”

He thought for a moment, then said, “Let’s hear her out first.”

It was what I wanted to do, too, so I agreed. We returned.

“Why did you come here, Juniper, to Autumn Vale?” I asked, to ease her back into her story. “Why not just go back to Buffalo once you figured out Davey really was hooked up with Zoey? You couldn’t have thought he’d dump her. She was rich.”

She swallowed hard and stared at me. “There was stuff going on, stuff with Davey and his crew, that I didn’t understand. That I
wanted
to understand.”

“What kind of stuff?” Pish asked.

Juniper was silent, just looking miserable and shaking her head.

I exchanged a look with Pish as Shilo and McGill looked on, a little puzzled, perhaps, but silent. “Okay, so you let Percy Channer, Zoey’s father, into the party that night. Is that true?”

She nodded.

“Did you know who he was? Did you tell him Davey was there? How did that go down?”

She shifted around and looked off toward the fire. “He met me at the bakery and asked questions. I found out who he was and told him I knew Zoey. Then he told me he just wanted to get his daughter and shove her in rehab to get her out of her parole-violation rap.”

It made sense that Percy would approach her that way, though I wasn’t sure the plan he shared with her was the complete truth. It would have appealed to Juniper as a way of getting rid of her rival and maybe getting Davey back. I thought for a second and asked, “Did he seem to know your name?”

She nodded. Channer had done his homework. “He offered me a hundred bucks to get him into the party without anyone knowing about it. It was so easy! The ladies in the kitchen didn’t know who was supposed to come or go.”

“So you figured turning her over to her father would get her out of your way, leave the field clear for you to get Davey back.” I said it just to keep her talking while I thought.

She nodded.

“Did you see him talking to Davey? What went down?”

“I don’t know; I lost sight of the guy. Those damn football goofs kept talking to me, and they tried to hoist me up on their shoulders until I jabbed one in the arm with a canopy pick.”

“Canapé,” I corrected.

“Whatever.”

“Who all was here? We know Davey and Zoey were, but who else?” Pish asked.

I held my breath, waiting.

“Zoey, yeah, and Davey, and Les.”

“Les Urquhart was there, too?” I glanced over at Pish. “He told me he wasn’t . . . or, well, not really. He just avoided the question, I guess. He must have slipped away, maybe with Zoey? But why did he leave? Did he know Davey was dead?” I mused aloud. “Did he maybe kill him for some reason?”

“I told you, it was that bitch Zoey who killed him!” Juniper said, her face reddening and twisting into a grimace.

“That is entirely possible,” I mused, pondering again the small handprint, “because she left, too, and why would she if she wasn’t guilty? I mean, Davey Hooper was her boyfriend. Surely she came with him and would expect to go with him.” Juniper had taken off, too, but I would get to that later. No point in treating her as a hostile witness. Yet. My mind tangled a bit, as I wondered when Zoey and Les became as chummy as they seemed to be now. Before or after Hooper’s death?

“Why were they all at Merry’s party anyway?” Pish asked.

“I asked Les,” Juniper said. “He told me that Davey was there to meet up with someone, some business associate.”

“Davey Hooper meeting a
business
associate at my party?” I asked, skeptical.

She nodded.

I exchanged a look with Pish; was that business associate Zoey’s father? Had Davey taken Zoey there, giving her some kind of story, so he could meet with Percy, get a payoff, and hand the girl over to her father? It hung together, pretty much, except then I wondered: why had Percy needed Juniper to get into the party? I could explain why Les and Zoey had disappeared from the party; if things went bad between the two men and Percy killed Hooper, they wouldn’t have wanted to be involved. “Did you actually talk to Davey at any point?” I asked, remembering seeing her with the cowboy who’d turned out to have been Davey, aka the murder victim.

She hung her head. “Yeah, for a minute. He told me he was sorry for how Les canned me.”

“Juniper, you’re so insistent on one point, and I want to know . . .
why
do you think Zoey would kill Davey?”

“She had taken up with Les, the little sleaze.”

So . . . before Hooper’s death. “Zoey Channer was having a fling with Les, too?”

Juniper nodded, tears welling. She fisted the tears from her eyes like a little kid, any attempt at grown-up world-weariness gone. “She had Davey, and she treated him like crap. I just don’t understand. How
could
she?” In a second her expression changed to loathing. “I hate her. I want her dead.”

Wow, the girl had mood swings! Not that I hadn’t dealt with my share of mood swings; with Leatrice it had been much the same, from weepiness to giddy laughter and back again in minutes. “But why would she
kill
Davey?”

She shrugged and sobbed.

If Davey Hooper had come to my party to meet up with someone, who was that someone? Was it Percy, as I now suspected? It wasn’t Juniper, certainly. And why had he had Zoey and Les with him? I frowned. The only thing that made sense was that Hooper planned to meet Channer at my party so he could receive a payoff, and he needed Zoey there to hand her over. But had Zoey been in on it or not? It could have been her plan all along to blackmail her father.

“I am sorry for all the pain you’ve been through,” I said in all sincerity. “It hurts to lose someone you love.” No matter if he was a big jerk.

She covered her face and wept, clearly brokenhearted.

“Did you see him talking to anyone that night?” I pressed, feeling like she might still be holding information back.

“We do want to figure out who did it,” Pish said. “And we
can’t
assume Zoey is guilty.”

I know women, and there was no way Juniper did not follow Davey Hooper as much as she could that night. I remember what being a lovesick twentysomething is like, and it is exactly like being a lovesick teenager but with more freedom. She wasn’t responding to questions, but I had to keep trying. “Who did Davey talk to? Did he argue with anyone? When did you last see him?”

She took a deep, heaving breath and looked up. There was no denying the depth of her loss, and I actually felt sympathy for her. I didn’t know what in her life had led to a piece of crap like Davey Hooper being worth crying over, but her pain was real.

“Juniper, I know you think Zoey killed your Davey,” Shilo said, the first she had spoken in a while. “Maybe it
was
Zoey, but if it wasn’t, you still want whoever did it to be caught, right? And pay?”

Shilo’s voice seemed to work some kind of soothing magic on Juniper, who said, “Yeah, I do. I’ll tell you what I can. I only saw Davey now and again, because I had to take food around. He had Zoey tagging after him when she wasn’t taunting me. I swear, I should have taken her out then, and maybe Davey would be alive.”

She was getting distracted again by her Zoey-as-murderess theory. “Who else? You said Les was there, but I didn’t see him. What costume was he wearing?”

“I don’t know who he was supposed to be. He had some weird wig on and a white lab coat.”

My eyes widened, and Pish and I shared a look. Les Urquhart was the Demon Barber? And had he indeed been carrying the straight razor that we suspected was the weapon? I had to tell Virgil this! I kept a hold on my excitement and said, “How did Davey and Les get along?”

She scrunched up her face. “Good. Why?”

“No conflicts?”

“No, of course not. Look, Les can be a douche, but he’s no killer, if that’s what you’re thinking.”

And just because he brought the weapon, didn’t mean he’d used it, I realized. He could have put it down or given it to someone else. “So, who else did Davey talk to?” I asked.

Juniper bolted up out of her chair, pointed toward the door, and hollered, “You!”

Chapter Eighteen

I
REALIZED
RIGHT
AWAY
she did not mean me, and I whirled in my seat. There, at the door of the parlor, was Cranston Higgins. “What are you doing here, Cranston?” And how the hell did he keep getting into the castle? I turned back to our guest, who was still standing and staring. “How do you know Cranston?” I asked Juniper.

“I saw him at the Party Stop a couple times,” Juniper said. Her voice was steady, but she looked spooked. Her gaze moved around the room to each of us. I was frankly puzzled.

“Hey, Merry, Pish, Shilo, McGill,” Cranston said, nodding to each of us in turn. He pulled off his black wool bomber-style jacket and slung it over a table, then unwound the scarf from his neck. “Well of
course
I’ve been at the Party Stop! I’ve been staying at a boarding house because you didn’t want me staying
here
,” he said to me, pointedly. “Even though you’ve got lots of extra rooms. So I went to the Party Stop to pick up cheap paper plates and plastic utensils. It’s a rough life for a bachelor, am I right, Pish? McGill?”

“Actually, I won’t be a bachelor much longer,” McGill said, and held out Shilo’s engagement finger with the pretty ring encircling it.

Cranston hooted and said, “Congratulations, you two! Couldn’t be a nicer couple.” He charged across the room and grabbed Shilo up in a bear hug, then pumped McGill’s outstretched hand with enthusiasm.

“I don’t feel well,” Juniper said, hand on her stomach. “Those chocolate muffins . . . they’re sitting like . . . like freakin’ rocks. What do you put in those things? Where’s the bathroom?” She put one hand over her mouth.

Damn. Maybe they were too rich on an empty stomach? Allergies? I hoped to heck she didn’t have a nut allergy. I had many questions for her, because I still didn’t know where the girl had gone after the party nor where she had been staying, but it would all have to wait until she felt better.

I showed her to the ground-floor bathroom, a little powder room tucked away behind the butler’s pantry near the back doorway, and went to the kitchen to get a glass of cold water and a damp cloth in case she vomited. I could hardly wait to ask her about seeing Cranston: why had she been so surprised to see him at the castle? I also wanted to ask her why she’d come to the castle this night. I stood staring out the kitchen window into the darkness and lost a few minutes pondering that. How much could I trust Juniper?

After a few minutes I went to the hallway outside of the powder room. “Juniper, are you okay?” I asked. I tapped, then put my ear to the wood door and listened for the sound of retching. Nothing. “Juniper?” No sound at all. I pushed open the door to an empty room. Sometimes I wonder . . . Am I really as bright as people tell me I am? I should have figured on this.

She was gone, and she had a good ten minutes on me. I didn’t even know how she had gotten out to the castle, but she must have driven. For all I knew she had stolen a car, and with the time I had allowed her in the bathroom, she could be past Ridley Ridge by now. I called the police station, giving the dispatcher a detailed message for Virgil about Juniper’s arrival and abrupt departure. Maybe I should have called them right away, but there was no use beating myself up over that now. I hung up and girded my loins to tackle my “cousin.” There was something fishy going on, and there was more to it than just his spurious claim to my castle.

Why had his arrival scared off Juniper?

I paused briefly before going back to my friends and did a little happy dance as I experienced a tingling of relief; Cranston, or whoever he was, was not my cousin. I didn’t need a DNA test to tell me that now, not with the fishiness of Juniper’s fear of him. All along I had not really believed him, but something inside of me wanted family. However . . . Wynter Castle was mine, all mine, and Cranston was a con artist. There were still a whole lot of questions Cranston was going to have to answer, particularly about his acquaintance with Les Urquhart, but I definitely had a skip and a hop to my step as I returned to the parlor. Silence reigned. Everyone looked a little uncomfortable. Cranston was sitting where Juniper had been.

I met Pish’s gaze and raised my brows. He nodded. We had partnered at euchre before, and he knew what that meant; I was going to try a little bit o’ the old bluff. “Juniper is so upset, Cranston . . . or
whomever
you are.
She
says you were good buddies with Les Urquhart. She’s weeping so hard right now that I can’t figure out all that she’s saying.”

Cranston stood and faced me, dainty, ring-laden hand on his chest. “I am wounded to the heart. Let me just talk to the girl to explain to her why I was talking to those fellows. We were no more than acquaintances, I assure you.”

Those fellows . . . not just Urquhart, then, but Davey, too. My stomach clenched. “You can tell
me
,” I said, as Pish, McGill, and Shilo all stood. “I’ll tell her. Who exactly are you, and what are you doing here?”

He bridled. “If you don’t believe me, that I am Melvyn Wynter’s grandson, then you are impugning my grandmother’s deathbed confession! Any court in the land would—”

“I think we’ll let the DNA talk,” Pish said, watching Cranston, who was puffing up like a toad, his face turning red.

“Cranston, there are so many holes in your story, it could be used as a sieve, but I’m willing to let the DNA test do the talking,” I said calmly. “The test is in a few days, so let’s agree to disagree until then.”

“You’ve humiliated me,” he said, and I swear that one big, fat tear rolled down his cheek. In a practiced, dramatic voice, he declaimed, “I’m leaving, and I will see you in court! You’ll be sorry, Merry Wynter!”

He whirled and stormed out of the parlor. I followed, but he didn’t have anything more to say except, as he paused, trembling, at the door, “You have wounded me. I thought I had found family, but all I found was . . . heartbreak!”

“And . . . scene,” I said, once he had exited.

We all trooped back into the parlor, and I told everyone about Juniper’s skipping out on me and my surmises. “I can’t get over the fact that she was fine with us until she saw Cranston.”

“Yeah. What the heck was that all about?” McGill said.

“She looked like she’d seen a ghost,” Shilo said.

“Pish, what’s your take on it?”

“On what, Cranston? That fellow, whatever his name is, is a classic con man,” he said, sitting back in the wing chair and wrinkling his brow. “I’ve met a lot of them, and he has all the earmarks. I thought so from the beginning, but you never call a bluff until you have all the facts.”

“Violent? Not violent?” I asked.

Pish considered for a moment, then said, “I don’t see him doing more than disappearing into the mist; the bluster of suing was classic ‘con man caught in the act and bluffing until he can escape the situation.’” He paused and grimaced. “What I can’t figure out is his connection to Davey Hooper and Les Urquhart.”

“You didn’t buy his claim of coincidence any more than I did,” I said. “But we don’t have a lot to go on, except Juniper saying she had seen him at the Party Stop. I guess we just don’t know enough.”

“Let me ask around,” McGill said. “I know folks in Ridley Ridge, and maybe they’ve seen Cranston there. Too bad you don’t have any photos.”

“His real name can’t be Cranston Higgins,” I said. “Maybe Virgil will have his real name by now, since they were looking into the background of everyone who was at the party.”

“Why don’t you call Virgil tomorrow and meet him somewhere?” Shilo said, her open gaze all innocence. “You two can talk.”

“I’ll do that,” I said, refusing to “get” her subtext.

After the long, busy day, I slept like a log or a baby or a dead man, whichever phrase you prefer to mean deep and dreamless sleep. I awoke early, made muffins, both savory and sweet, brownies, and lemon squares, and headed into town. The mechanic had promised to get my new/old car to me within the next few days, and I looked forward to having wheels of my own. In my situation, it had become a necessity. Jezebel was fixed up for the moment, but Hayes had said to treat her nicely, so I spoke sweetly to her and hoped I made it into town and back home without too much trouble.

I had called the police once again, told them I had information for Virgil, and gave them my schedule. Muffins and squares to the Vale Variety and Lunch, then on to Golden Acres. I went to the back door and had a chat with the cook, who was now my good friend. I then wound my way past Gogi’s office—she wasn’t there—and to the front desk, where Mrs. Dotty Levitz was kicking up a fuss, as she sometimes did. The crafty lady, who suffers dementia but is nobody’s fool, was tossing her array of small stuffed animals willy-nilly out of her walker basket and heading for the door. She had done this before as a distraction to try to get away, certain she had to meet her mother somewhere. This time the receptionist was smiling because she’d had the foresight to lock the door already when she saw Dotty heading in her direction.

Hannah, I could hear from the buzz of voices and conversation in the lounge, was there for one of her bi-weekly visits. She brought books and her sunny personality to Golden Acres. Her eyes lit up when I entered, and she gestured me over.

“Merry, I have
such
news! I did research, using the maiden name of your great uncle’s girlfriend. Remember you told me Doc said she still had family in the area? Well, guess who our Yolanda-also-known-as-Violet is related to?” Her big gray eyes sparkled.

“You’ve got me there.”

“She had a sister, remember? The sister’s name was Dorothea, or Dorothy, but she is now known as . . . Dotty!”

Dotty? I gasped. “Is her married name Dotty Levitz?”

“Exactly!”

Interesting, but disappointing in a way. Dotty couldn’t remember what she’d had for lunch, much less anything else. Gogi came looking for me. She had helped Hannah with the investigation, and she confirmed the finding.

“That won’t help, then,” I said. It probably didn’t matter at this point, given that I now thought Cranston was a con man, but I still wanted to have proof to throw in his face.

“On the contrary,” Gogi said. “I think Dotty has something to tell you that you’ll be interested to hear. She remembers very well the events of that summer, better than what happened yesterday, if you read between the lines.” She led the elderly lady into the lounge and sat her down, and with some prompting, got the story out of her.

It took a little time, so I will give a synopsis: Violet, who’d hated her name, Yolanda, as much as Dotty had disliked Dorothea, had gone out with Melvyn Wynter through high school, but when he enlisted, they had a big argument. He went off to boot camp, and she felt she was free to do what she wanted. So Violet got herself a boyfriend who was older, classifed 4-F, and had a good job. She married him in secret, then had a big going away party just so Melvyn would read about it.

Dotty looked from side to side, and then at Doc, who sat over in the corner listening in as he played a game of chess with Hubert Dread. “She was a jealous, horrible sister, though, and I’ll tell you why: poor Violet couldn’t have a baby, no matter how she tried.” Dotty laughed out loud, her eyes twinkling with seventy-year-old mischief. “I had three, and she didn’t have a one! Poor old Violet.”

I looked over to Gogi. “Are you sure this is true?”

Gogi nodded, petting Dotty’s spotted arthritic hand gently. “Oh yes, I’m sure she’s right. In fact, I looked into it and found out that Violet is still alive and well and living at Camelot Corners Nursing Home in a small hamlet just outside of Batavia, so for any number of reasons she
can’t
be Cranston’s late grandmother. She never did have children, and she is still alive and relatively well.”

I nodded and sighed. If I hadn’t already been sure, this would have driven a stake in Cranston’s claims, but this was the confirmation I needed. A slow burn of anger was sparked in my gut. How dare he put me through this . . . and for what?

Gogi touched Dotty’s wispy hair, and the woman put her head down on the nursing home owner’s shoulder. “I guess the sisters lost track of each other,” Gogi gently said. “Dotty’s son is so pleased that he’s going to take his mother there so they can visit. He told me he remembers his aunt Vi from the old days, but she dropped out of sight in the seventies. I guess the two sisters didn’t get along very well and stopped talking to each other. He is
so
grateful, you have no idea. And to think, if it hadn’t been for a con man, the two sisters might never have gotten back together.”

Hannah spoke up. “He planned it well, I must say. Cranston must have used public records, old newspapers, and whatever else he could find.”

“Why did he target me in the first place?” I asked.

Hannah scrunched up her little face. “I don’t know. I wonder if, when Andrew Silvio posted for heirs when he was doing the Wynter estate stuff, that Cranston caught wind of it and planned his con?”

“But that was ages ago. Why wait so long?”

She shrugged. “Maybe it took that long to figure everything out? I don’t know how con artists work. I think he must have used photos of himself with his real grandma, and maybe even an old photo of his grandmother for the locket. He would have bought the locket at an antique store and had it engraved with the name and sentiment he wanted.”